[HN Gopher] Fast File Finder for Windows is a tool for quickly f...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Fast File Finder for Windows is a tool for quickly finding files by
       name
        
       Author : disadvantage
       Score  : 29 points
       Date   : 2022-02-05 18:54 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.kowalczyk.info)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.kowalczyk.info)
        
       | desktopninja wrote:
       | fascinating. Primarily use forfiles.exe or where.exe. Pwsh's get-
       | childitem is similarly as fast
        
       | chernevik wrote:
       | Any Unix (including OSX) has "find" on the command line.
        
       | civilized wrote:
       | Why doesn't Microsoft do this themselves? They've larded up
       | Windows with tons of worthless crap, so clearly they have a lot
       | of time of their hands. Why not give the user something useful
       | for once, something that OS X users have had for decades?
       | 
       | Is the company full of morons, or do they just not see what's in
       | it for them? That is, why bother helping the user if it won't
       | necessarily make them $$$?
       | 
       | Sad as they are, I find these little details fascinating. They
       | really show how unimaginative and short-term oriented giant
       | public tech companies often are.
       | 
       | Apple ruining the MBP in 2016, only to walk back pretty much
       | everything they did 6 years later, is another great example.
        
         | ldx1024 wrote:
         | The default search tool from the Microsoft file explorer is an
         | embarassment. Routinely doesn't find files that are there. No
         | positive indication of when the search is actually finished.
         | Wack advanced search syntax that I can't bother to learn. I
         | could go on, but the things I have already listed are more than
         | enough.
         | 
         | The search tool on Windows XP with the animated dog was 100x
         | better than what they have there now. I usually just go with
         | "dir" redirected to a file when I really need to find something
         | now. Yet another example of "upgrades" being actively worse
         | than what came before it.
        
           | tester756 wrote:
           | Maybe it due to language
           | 
           | but when I want to open downloaded folder and search for it,
           | then the first entry on the list is "remove downloaded maps"
           | that I never/once used meanwhile 2nd option is the one that I
           | always use, yet its still #2...
        
         | logicalmonster wrote:
         | I believe that all of these companies have some smart employees
         | who are capable of tasteful design and who know about real
         | problems with their products but who are screwed over by layers
         | of self-serving bureaucracy. The project manager for some dumb
         | feature in some corner of the OS wants to ensure their project
         | is successful so they get a good review: that's often their key
         | motivation. They're not as incentivized to expend engineering
         | hours from their team and try and coordinate with 5 other teams
         | to get something cool done.
         | 
         | When it comes to building good stuff, having a powerful central
         | figure like a Steve Jobs who can just murder bad features and
         | force the implementation of good features is probably one of
         | the best things a company can have.
        
         | 0x008 wrote:
         | They must think that this way they will make more money. In the
         | end for them it is not about generating a good incentive for
         | people to stay with windows, it is just about not giving them
         | enough incentive to leave. And - given that most people who use
         | windows have no alternatives - the bar is very low.
        
         | DanTheManPR wrote:
         | It seems incredibly weird to me that the start menu search
         | can't do basic stuff like launch browser bookmarks.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | justsomehnguy wrote:
         | a) ISVs
         | 
         | b) anti-monopoly lawsuits
         | 
         | TL;DR: for every QoL feature Apple/Google would be praised, M$
         | shitheads would be shown their place.
        
           | ComputerGuru wrote:
           | Neither of those factor into MS product decisions much any
           | more.
        
             | justsomehnguy wrote:
             | It's hard to change after two decades of.
        
       | teknopaul wrote:
       | FYI mlocate works on Windows.
       | 
       | Never had a PC without locate updated and grep
        
       | adhesive_wombat wrote:
       | I'm looking for a working alternative to Albert or Rofi in
       | Windows. It seems there are several dead projects like Cerebro
       | that integrate with tools like Everything.
       | 
       | Crucially, it must be extensible so I can add domain specific
       | plugins. Ideally I'd be able to reuse code between Windows and
       | Linux, but I don't see any cross platform ones, so maybe it'll
       | need shims.
        
         | YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote:
         | development is slow but the dev is reachable and the tool does
         | its job https://www.listary.com/
        
       | naikrovek wrote:
       | Voidtools Everything is my go-to for this, if anyone was thinking
       | "I want to know what naikrovek is using to find files by name..."
        
         | NicoJuicy wrote:
         | I also use it in combination with everything toolbar
         | 
         | https://github.com/stnkl/EverythingToolbar
        
           | adamscybot wrote:
           | Amazing! I always wanted Everything + deeper OS integration
           | and this fits the bill.
        
         | eigenvalue wrote:
         | Agreed, I use Everything at least 10 times a day. Not only are
         | searches instantaneous, but it doesn't even need to use a lot
         | of time/compute to build the index because its using the built-
         | in NTFS index. Why Microsoft doesn't expose a similar search
         | tool is beyond confusing to me.
        
           | rasz wrote:
           | >I believe what you're doing is describing something that
           | might be considered an entire doctoral research project in
           | _insert whatever_ as "extremely simple" somewhat combatively.
           | 
           | https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/10362
           | 
           | also https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1487228574608211969
           | "Nuanced communication usually doesn't work at scale" aka
           | Nobody at Microsoft is able to do more than one thing at a
           | time anymore.
        
           | agumonkey wrote:
           | It's totally absurd to develop the foundation for such a
           | massively fast and useful tool yet have horrendous search
           | features in your graphical user shell.
           | 
           | Searching is a human right (only half joking)
        
         | Barrin92 wrote:
         | +1 for Everything. Fsearch is a good alternative on Linux
         | 
         | https://github.com/cboxdoerfer/fsearch
        
         | sixothree wrote:
         | Everything mixed with AstroGrep is pretty much all you ever
         | need for windows search.
        
           | majkinetor wrote:
           | DnGrep is MUCH better.
        
             | ivanche wrote:
             | Wow! Thanks a million! This comment alone is worth all the
             | time I've spent on HN this year :)
        
         | jokoon wrote:
         | it doesn't work without NTFS indexing or a voidtool service
        
         | J_cst wrote:
         | Everything is just great.
        
         | knight17 wrote:
         | I am also a frequent user of Everything. If you are on Windows
         | definitely give it a go. It is similar to the tool in this post
         | but much more feature-rich.
         | 
         | https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/
         | 
         | You can load it with the following bookmarks to explore and
         | filter (e.g., see all 4K files in your system, or in a
         | directory) your files in a nice way:
         | 
         | https://www.voidtools.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4239
        
       | morninglight wrote:
       | Using "dir" on the Windows command line can do a simple search.
       | It is on every Windows machine and easy to use. It is not the
       | fastest but it can be useful. Amazing how few people know how to
       | use it. Just type "help dir" from the Windows command line.
        
         | billforsternz wrote:
         | Yes, dir /s file Looks for the file in the current directory
         | and all subdirectories. I wish Unix ls could do the same thing
         | as easily. MS-DOS rules forever I guess.
        
           | snoopen wrote:
           | I think 'find ./ -iname file' does the same on Linux?
        
         | auxym wrote:
         | or `gci -rec` in powershell
        
       | Scramblejams wrote:
       | What do y'all like for searching by file contents? For Windows
       | and Linux?
        
         | jokoon wrote:
         | git grep is the best option, in my view
         | 
         | if you want to go beyond, advanced stuff like elastic search
         | might be necessary, though
        
         | sdrinf wrote:
         | For source code specifically: ggreer's silver searcher:
         | https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher
        
       | jakub_g wrote:
       | BTW: Sumatra PDF by the same author is also worth checking.
        
         | auxym wrote:
         | Sumatra is one of the rare pieces of windows software that I
         | miss on linux.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-02-05 23:01 UTC)